become more spiritual

This was called “practice spirituality more” but I wanted to see what other people were doing with this idea. So now some of the entrieds I wrote don’t make sene. Oh well.

In two days it will be Halloween. As a Pagan, this is the highest of the hollidays I celebrate. I am attempting to prepare for it in the best way I can think of, looking through every book I have. But the problem is that as a very new Pagan (I only officially converted in August), I don’t know much of what I would like to do or how to do it. As far as I can tell, there is no cookie cutter way of celebrating a Pagan holliday, it’s very much to each his own, such as the ways in which you practice being a Pagan is very much to each his own.

There is another side that I am worried about. Halloween is the day when the vail between the living and the dead is the thinnist. This is the day when we celebrate death as a natural part of the wheel of life. Still, I am having a hard time accepting this. You see it is only recently (this past april in fact) that I have had someone who I consider close to me die. I am having a hard time letting her go. The idea of celebrating the wheel means that I am celebrating the fact that she now gets to move on to her new life. In doing that I am admitting that she’s really gone. That our promises of “getting together someday” will never come true.

Still, I want to celebrate that death is a part of life, one that we do not give it the respect it deserves. For if you notice, while we fear death we as a society are drawn to it-playing violent video games and watching violent shows. I want my Halloween celebration to be about having a better understanding of death and how it works with life, and a way to help all of us grieve. I think this is a good thing. So happy Halloween all! And Blessed be.

I am a witch, that is true in all its forms. This does not mean, however, that I am ready to practice majic. Just because someone is a christian does not make them minister. There is years of study to understand their religion. Only after those years of study are they ready to preach it to other people, practice the majic of faith on other people. The same is true for practicing majic. I am a Pagan and that makes me a Witch. That does not make me ready to practice majic for myslf or anyone else. I am a witch because I believe in the Goddess Diana and the God. I follow the beliefs of Paganism to my fullist abilities, but I know now that those abilities are not ready to be put out there on me or anyone else, and that is ok. I need to practice to understand, not to be.

Well, it finally happened. I officially celebrated becoming a Pagan. How do I feel about it? It’s really a mix of feelings. First, I am….but then there’s….damn it…I don’t know how to describe how I’m feeling. How do you describe the feeling that comes with finally understanding where you lie spiritually? You’ve got to understand, for years I dealt with people telling me I was going straight to hell because I was a unitarian (and still am technically-yes, I know I’m a Pagan, but you can be both. Don’t ask me to explain it, it’s too long and complicated). I know I’d probably still be told that by the same people, being a Pagan is no different then being a devil worshiper in thier eyes I’m sure, at least I’m finally more grounded in what I believe in.

Now comes the hard part…really digging my heals in and studying the religion not just to decide if I want to be it, but study my religion because I want to really be a Pagan, in mind body and soul. That’s going to take a lot of work. I’m sure even the people who write books are still to this day learning more things.

Well, that’s where I am. I’m not going to consider this goal done until practicing spirituality has become a habbit that I want to keep around because I enjoy it. Not that it is a chore now, but it is more that I forget to do it. Maybe going down in the basement everyday like I do and seeing the worship area I created will do the trick. I hope so. Till next time!

Sorry so long!

Around this time last year I decided to take a year off from calling my self anything religious, and simply tell people that I am studying. What I was really studying was the Pagan belief system. As time went by, and I began to understand it more and more, I decided that the Pagan belief system makes more sense to me then anything ever has in my life, especially any religion. Before deciding if I wanted to be a Pagan I gave myself the date of August 31st of this year to make the decision. Yet as the time grew closer still, I decided that I really did want to become a Pagan. Therefore, this day has become more of a celebration, and my way of giving myself my own personal inaguration into the pagan world. Call it a sort of “coming out” party, just instead of coming out with the fact that I’m bi sexual (which I am but that’s for another entry and goal entirely) I’m coming out to the fact that after that day I will oficially be a witch. There is so much planning going into that day! I better get to it!

Many people think that Pagan’s simply practice majic haphazardly. They do not realize the work that goes in to learning how to hone in the energy it takes to make these types of things happen. Being a witch means to be constantly learning. Well today I began my learning by using a simple grounding and centering excercise.

For those of you who don’t know what it is, Grounding and Centering should be used when practicing all spells. These excercies put the witch or witches in connection with the earth, and are able to use the energy that comes from the earth. In practicing these daily, Witches will be better able to be connected to the great mother, who is our goddess that we worship.

This is only the second day I have spent grounding and centering. I find the experiance quite moving. You really do feel the energy from the earth. The choice is then mine or who ever else is doing it whether to use that energy in visualization, praciticing spells, or whehter just to sit with it or not. I think even if you are going to be nothing else but Grounding and Centering you are furthering your practice as a witch and helping yourself to become a better witch and a better person.

I think that I need to learn to be ok with not having an exact name for the spirituality I practice. I want to include the teachings of such people as Jesus, Budah, and others, but I do not want to practice their relition. I feel that I am a witch at heart, but that there are things to learn from other religions. Anyway, as Tori Amos puts it:

“If Jesus were alive today, I don’t think that he would be part of a christian church anyway.”

Ha, if someone who was a christian were to read this they might flip out. Can they handle the fact that there is a lot of hypocracy in their own religion? We’ll have to see…

I don’t know why more people don’t have this down on their list. It seems like spirituatlity has become a dirty word in this world. It’s like people would rather be religious then spiritual. But the truth is, is that really the right way to go?

People often think that being religious and being spritual are very much one in the same. I, on the other hand, think that the too concepts are very different. When someone is religous, it seems to me that it means that they follow a certain type of religions rules. To me this takes away the point of going to church or practicing anything. If you don’t put your soul, or your spirit, into your religion, then what are you practicing but what someone else told you to? Isn’t that just regurgetating? I did enough regurgetating in school thank you very much, and it didn’t do anything for my soul

But to be spiritual is to really follow what your spirit tells you to follow. It is going what feels good to you. Yes, I realize that that can lead you into some bad places, but if you think about it long and hard I don’t think anyone has ever done anything that is bad for themselves that somewhere some part of their mind probably went: I really don’t want to do this. I don’t know, maybe I’m completely wrong about this, but that’s what I believe. This is why I could never be a christian. It just didn’t feel right deep in my soul I tried it I really really did…and it just isn’t right for me.

I want to be spiritual, not religous, and that’s the way i’ll keep myself.